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Jonathan's Jungle
News from March
and April 2010
28th
April 2010
I am delighted to have even
more exciting baby news to report! First
of all my first two baby
crested geckos
for 2010 have hatched!! The first one actually
hatched on Sunday 25th April but this is the first
chance I have had to update this page, and baby
number 2 has also hatched this evening! I
caught number 2 in the act of hatching as you can
see here:
As I have said here many
times in previous years there is nothing quite like
seeing a baby animal hatch from its egg,
irrespective of what type of animal it is, and I
will never tire of watching crested geckos hatching!
Baby number 1 has been exploring its new home and is
a beautiful example of the species as you can see
here:
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As well as this exciting
news I have also this evening had another big
surprise as I discovered that my other pregnant
imperial scorpion has
had her babies during the last 24 hours!!!
These are a completely separate group of babies to
the ones which were reported below on 17th March!
There are less babies (known as scorplings) in this
group as you can see here, as they only cover the
front section of their mother's back rather than the
whole body!:
It has certainly been a
great few weeks for babies in my collection and I am
looking forward to seeing which babies will be along
next! Watch this space...
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22nd
April 2010
Exciting news as my first
baby jungle nymphs
for more than two years have hatched in the last few
days! The newly hatched babies (nymphs) of
this species are quite large, especially when
compared to the nymphs of other stick insect
species, and they have quite a lot of spines on
their bodies even when newly hatched as you can see
below:
The picture above is of a
female nymph. You can tell easily in this
species because the point at the end of her abdomen
will develop during her life cycle into an
ovipositor, which will be used to bury her eggs
into the ground! It is really hard to imagine
that this little female nymph will end up bright
lime green (or yellow), approximately 15cm in length
and potentially 50g in weight when she is fully
grown! For pictures of the adults on my jungle
nymphs page click here.
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I have also acquired some
new millipedes in the last few days! These are
individuals of a species known commonly as the
American orange banded millipede
and they have been bred by a friend of
mine in Scotland. The picture below is of an
adult pair and a selection of juveniles:
As you can see they are
very pretty indeed, and like all millipedes they
have the ability to curl up into a spiral if they
feel threatened. They always bury their heads
in the centre of the spiral to protect it from being
injured if an animal should attack them, like the
one here:
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Keeping with a millipede
theme, some time ago I reported on the hatching in
my collection of lots of
olive millipede
babies. I took the photograph below this week
of those same babies which are now approaching adult
size and looking gorgeous! They were all
clustered together underneath a piece of cork bark
in their enclosure so it was really easy to snap
them together!
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I thought you might like to
see how Ruby the Mexican red knee
tarantula is looking now that three weeks have
passed since her moult at the end of March as
reported below! The short answer is ABSOLUTELY
GORGEOUS! She looks better than she ever has
in the nearly three years since I first acquired her
as you can see here, with richer red/orange
colouration and far deeper blacks which make for a
beautiful contrast!
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31st
March 2010
More exciting news to
report today, as yesterday evening the lovely
Ruby the Mexican red knee
tarantula moulted! This is the scene which
greeted me when I went to check on her last night, a
scene which never gets boring no matter how many
times I see it!:
Her empty exoskeleton (exuvium)
is towards the bottom right of the picture and is
upside down, which is why it doesn't look exactly
the same as her. It always amazes me how a tarantula
can pull its entire 'new' body free from the old one
without breaking the exoskeleton, a truly amazing
feat!! As you can below Ruby is looking
absolutely gorgeous again, having had a much duller
colouration in the weeks leading up to this moult!
She has grown quite a bit
following her moult and I will look forward to
showing her off in schools, parties etc. in a few
weeks when she is fully recovered from the
procedure, which requires a lot out of energy and
plenty of rest afterwards! The pictures below
show the moulted exuvium, which I have very
carefully positioned in a plastic tub so as not to
break it as it is very brittle and easy to damage.
The left hand picture shows the exuvium with the
carapace (head) in place, whereas on the right it
has been 'flipped back' to reveal the inside:
It is through the openings
in the central part of the body (underneath the
carapace) that the tarantula has to pull all of its
new legs and fangs, a truly remarkable achievement.
You can see these openings more clearly in the two
pictures below, with carapace intact first and then
removed in the second picture!
Each opening leads into a
hollow tunnel and the new legs and fangs are pulled
out of these during the long process of moulting,
which can take several hours to complete. I
have always said that this is one of the most
remarkable sights in the natural world and I stand
by that claim again today, it is a sight I never
tire of seeing!
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29th
March 2010
Just this evening I have
found all of my new baby
imperial scorpions off of their mother's back!
This means that they are now on their own to fend
for themselves, and they are looking fabulous as you
can see below! A few days after my last update
they moulted for the first time and were seen
occasionally popping off of mum's back onto the
ground, but as of now they are fully on their own!
This is how they appeared just after moulting and as
they began to venture off by themselves, never
straying too far from the protection of the female:
As you can see they now
look very different compared to how they did when
newly born (pictured below) both in terms of their
colour and how their body shape is now more defined!
Now that they are
completely free from their mother's care they have
an enclosure all to themselves in which to explore
and to catch their own food, as you can see they are
so cute!
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17th
March 2010
I am absolutely delighted
to announce that for the fourth time in three years
I have had baby imperial
scorpions born in my collection! Scorpions
give birth to live babies rather than laying eggs
and as you can see below the new babies (known as
scorplings) look a lot different to their
mother!
When the scorplings are
born their bodies are very soft indeed and they are
totally reliant on their mother for protection from
danger. The mother carries them on her back
for the first couple of weeks of life for this reason,
demonstrating excellent parental care!
I am estimating that there
are approximately 25 scorplings in this new brood -
it is difficult to accurately count them when they
are clustered together like this but I can certainly
count more than 20 and in previous broods there have
been between 25 and 28. I'll update this page
to show you how they are doing in a few weeks time!
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2nd
March 2010
I am absolutely
delighted to have acquired a new pair of Australian
rainbow stag
beetles! Anyone who met my first male
rainbow stag beetle during 2009 will know why I am
so pleased, as these are truly remarkable and
beautiful insects! They originate in the
rainforests of north-eastern Queensland and they
really do have to be seen to be believed as their
colours and shiny bodies do not look real at all, as
you can see in the pictures below!
The richness of their
colouration is amazing and the colours seem to
change depending on which angle you look at them
from, as well as from which direction the light is
shining on them!
The male is much larger
than the female and he has huge mandibles or
'antlers' as you can see in this picture:
The female rainbow stag
beetle has far smaller mandibles but she is no less
beautiful as you can see below. The colours
change so much depending on the angle and light by
which you view the beetles, it really is hard to
describe and needs to be seen with your own eyes!
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